Klaus Bachmann. Genocidal Empires

The German historian and political scientist Klaus Bachmann, an expert in German-Polish relations after World War II and more recently interested in international law and transitional justice, has ventured into new territory: African and German colonial history. With Genocidal Empires: German Colonialism in Africa and the Third Reich, Bachmann claims to answer two major questions that have been preoccupying scholars for at least two decades now: whether and in what sense the extreme colonial violence committed in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) against the Herero and Nama can be considered the first genocide of the twentieth century; and whether and in what sense these mass killings can be considered a precursor to the Nazi genocide. The book is structured into two parts, with the first (chaps. 1–4) addressing the former question, the second (chaps. 5–7) addressing the latter question. The analytical lens through which Bachmann chose to answer his questions is international criminal law (ICL). He thus also intervenes in larger discussions within the rapidly growing field of genocide studies regarding the role, if any, legal definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity—notably the UN Genocide Convention (1948)—should play in historical and social scientific analyses of mass violence. As the field expands, there is less and less agreement on the concept of “genocide” as an analytical category, legal or otherwise, with some scholars even suggesting jettisoning the term altogether. But Bachmann insists that relating ICL standards to the German colony, where contemporaneous international law (Völkerrecht) did not apply, “facilitates not only the distinction between different kinds of mass atrocities, but also helps to disentangle genocidal actions from non-genocidal ones within the same course of events” (163).

Archaeology · Colonialism · Crimes against humanity · Genocide · German · International law · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Political science · Politics · War crime · African history and culture studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law